by Alan Furst
She had been born in the countryside, she said, somewhere in the South of France, but of a family, she claimed, from elsewhere. Arrived in Paris at sixteen, alone, without money, and survived. Her father, according to the time of day, had been a gangster, a poet, or a nobleman. She had never met him, she said, and had few memories of her mother—carried off by the influenza epidemic of 1919. She had been raised by an aunt, or rather, a woman who called herself aunt, or, perhaps, a woman who had known her aunt. None of her stories was ever told the same way twice and he finally gave it up—acknowledged inconsistency the only effective defense against a trained interrogator—and consigned her to the present moment, which was where she wanted to be in the first place.
He had met her in a bookstore where she worked, lost in a billowing blue smock. She had fierce little hands, and he could not take his eyes off them as they whisked piles of books into order. She challenged him—What are you looking at?—he met the challenge. She demanded coffee. They went to a café. He waited for her after work. Eventually, they returned to his room. The following day, she appeared at his door with a cardboard suitcase. “I have brought a few things,” she'd said.
She had, in her own way, taught him to be her lover. Using for instruction a great range of pouts and swoons and sly looks, attacks and retreats, an entire ragbag of stratagems. She teased him until he growled, then ran away. But not too far. Led him, subtly, to such special silky places as made her sing and showed him how, by example, to play lovers' games.
She seduced him. Sometimes this way, sometimes that. With rainy-day melancholy or by getting absurdly drunk on two glasses of wine. “Did we do something vile? I swear I don't remember.” She was clever at being “naughty” and making him “mad.” Sometimes, pretending to immense modesty, she let him have a peek at something he wasn't supposed to see—quite by accident, of course, a stolen glimpse. She played at being his captive, squeaking for mercy. Or at being his captor, in the voice of a disciplinarian schoolteacher. At times, she was partial to costumes. Not intentional ones, it just happened that he would discover her in garter belt and silk stockings while she was looking for her earrings. Other times, he would get in bed to find her in the chaste cotton shift of a schoolgirl, on which occasion she chose to address him as uncle. She taught him this and she taught him that until at last it dawned on him that the only way a man ever becomes a lover is at the hands of a woman.
Of her former lovers, whoever they might have been, he had no time to be jealous. The world seemed intent on rushing off its cliff, so, like everyone else, he lived for the moment and hung on tight. The lipstick grew crimson, hairdos were twisted about in bizarre shapes, and in some dresses a woman simply could not sit down. Affairs begun on Friday were over by Wednesday. And every woman in the world seemed to want him, sensing, he guessed, what went on in the little room. At Heininger, the screechy English girls pressed apartment keys into his hand, absolutely bent on having it off with the working class, and an evil-looking Slav at that. He smiled wistfully and returned the keys, regret for the lost opportunity showing clearly in his expression, hoping that such chivalry would spare him their anger.
If he was tempted at all, it was the French women who caught his attention, especially the ones a few years older than he. It was the single glance on the street that undid him, gone in the very last instant before it actually meant anything. His eyes would roam hungrily after them as they trailed their wondrous perfume away down the avenue, leaving him to sniff great nosefuls of Parisian air. What was that?
But Aleksandra, who smelled like soap, or lemons, or someone who had just been in the hot sun, was more than enough for him, so he prayed at one church only and, soon enough, woke to discover that love had got him.
In Vidin, the March wind blew in hard off the river, rippling the surface of the water and flattening the reeds that grew by the wooden dock. A few snow patches remained on the dirt street that ran past the waterfront shacks of the fishermen, and the two old people in dark clothing, a man and a woman, moved carefully around them, bodies bent against the wind. The woman wore a black shawl over her head and the man held his cap on with his hand. It was Sunday, and they were going home from mass.
At the path that led through the garden to the house, they stopped. The woman pointed to a small skiff tied to a post among the reeds and said something to her husband. He shook his head, then shrugged. He did not know, he did not care. When they went into the house, there was a stranger sitting at the plank table near the stove. He wore the wool cap and clothing of a river fisherman. He stood up politely as they entered. “Please forgive me,” he said in Russian, “for coming into your house without invitation.”
The woman recognized him then—he was the man who had taken Khristo away from Vidin—and her hands flew to the knot of her shawl. The old man stared at the stranger.
“Who are you?” he said.
“He is the Russian,” his wife said. She let go of the knot, but her mouth was tight with anxiety.
The old man continued to stare. Finally, as though he remembered, he said, “Oh yes.”
The woman opened the door of the stove, inserted a few sticks of oak branch and prodded the fire to life with an iron poker. She poured well water from a bucket into a kettle on the stove and spooned black tea into a battered copper samovar. Almost immediately, the room grew warm and smelled sharp and sweet from the wood smoke.
The Russian spoke gently to the old man. “Won't you sit down? ”
The man sat, took off his cap and placed it carefully on his knee, as though he were visiting the house, and waited for the other man to speak. From the wind, there were tears standing in the corners of his eyes.
The Russian walked to the window, stood to one side, and looked out. “I came inside,” he explained, “so as not to be seen by your neighbors. We know how things are going down here—I don't want to cause you trouble.”
The woman waited by the stove for the water to boil. “You will have tea,” she said.
“Yes. Thank you,” the Russian said, and sat down. “I've brought you a letter. From your son.”
“From Nikko?” the old man said.
The woman shifted the kettle noisily on the stove.
“No,” the Russian said. “From Khristo.”
The old man nodded.
“Shall I read it to you?” the Russian asked.
“Yes, please,” the woman said, her back to the room.
He reached inside his wool jacket and took out a square of paper, unfolded it carefully and smoothed it on the table. “There is no date, of course,” he said, “but I am permitted to tell you that it was written last week.”
“I see,” the old man said. His eyes narrowed and he nodded wisely, as though he well understood such complicated matters.
“ ‘Dear Papa,' it begins, ‘I greet you. I write in hope that you and Mama and Helena are in good health and that the fishing is good this year. I am well, though I work very hard, and there is a lot to learn. I am successful at my school, and my superiors are pleased with my progress. All here join me in hoping that the day may soon come when I can return to see you. Please kiss Mama for me. Your son, Khristo.' ”
The old woman walked over from the stove and the Russian handed her the letter. She could not read, but she held it up to the light, then touched the writing. “Thank you,” she said to the Russian.
“Look.” She showed the old man the letter. “It is from Khristo.”
He stared at the paper for a time, then said, “That's good.”
“He's doing very well indeed,” the Russian said, taking the letter back. “Better than most of the others.”
“And he is in Russia?” the woman asked.
The Russian smiled, apologetic. “I cannot tell you where he is. About that I am sorry, very sorry, because he would be proud for you to know it.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed.
They were silent for a time, then the Russian relented. “He is in the place
where he has always most wanted to go. But you must not tell anybody that.”
The woman returned to the stove, the water was just beginning to boil. “We do not speak of him,” she said.
“But you can surely guess,” the Russian said.
She thought for a moment. “He is in Vienna? Khristo?”
“Perhaps,” the Russian said.
“Or Paris?”
The Russian spread his hands in helplessness, he was not allowed to tell.
“How he dreamed of such places,” she said, shaking her head. She poured a thin stream of steaming water into the samovar. “We have never been to Sofia, even,” she added. She left the tea to steep and went to her husband and squeezed his arm. “Nicolai,” she said, “did you hear that? He is in a great city. Vienna, or Paris, or somewhere.”
The old man nodded. “That's good,” he said.
He woke at noon, lit a Gitane from the packet on the night table, then lay back on the pillow and watched the blue smoke curl up to the ceiling. There was a neatly spun web in one corner of the ceiling, a small spider fussing at its center strands. Max, Aleksandra called him. Their house pet. Cigarette smoke seemed to affect Max, provoking him into a spasm of housekeeping. On the top of the dresser, the food from the party was laid out like a miniature buffet—though Aleksandra had pretty much done for the asparagus. The other item he'd brought home was lying, tossed casually aside, in a nest of string and brown paper.
Aleksandra had gone off to work, at the bookstore near the Café Flor on the square in front of the church of St.-Germain-des-Près. It was a communist-surrealist-anarchist-dadaist bookstore, a true Rive Gauche jungle of wild beards, curved pipes, black sweaters and sloe-eyed girls who stared. A serious place, at the geographical center of the city's artistic and political whirlpool, decorated with clenched-fist posters of all sorts. According to Aleksandra, all the local celebrities—Picasso, Modigliani, Jean Cocteau, André Breton—were seen there, as well as at their customary tables at the Café Flor.
Cigarette in hand, he rose naked from the rumpled sheets, padded across the cold floor, and opened the shutters. Above the rooftops, the sky was sharply blue, with white scud racing in from the Brittany coast. There was a pale girl who lived in a room across the street, Khristo had once waved to her as she shook a dust mop out the window, and she had waved back. Her shutter was closed this morning. By opening the window and leaning well out, he could see down into the street. Women with long breads in string bags. School kids in their uniforms coming home for lunch. One of the Jewish tailors, in yarmulke, black vest and rolled-up shirtsleeves, put his cat out the door of his shop. The air smelled like dust and garbage and garlic and March weather. Not a sign of last night's snow.
He put on pants and shirt and went down the hall and used the toilet, then returned to the room, adjusted the shutters so that he could still see a slice of sky but no one could look in, and took the pistol from its brown paper nest. He lit another cigarette and propped it on a Suze ashtray and went to work. Broke out the magazine and examined it in the light. It was a 9 mm automatic of Polish manufacture, designated wz/35 for the year of its design, called the Radom after the works where it was made. Large and heavy, it had an excellent reputation for dependability. He played with it for a time, discovering that what seemed to be the safety was in fact a slide lock that facilitated field-stripping the weapon. He took it apart, checked for burrs in the metal, found everything smooth and oiled. The wooden grip was scratched and nicked—the pistol had obviously been well used.
He had purchased the pistol at Omaraeff's request—one couldn't say no to one's friend and boss—and it had been easy enough to find. He'd gone to the Turkish quarter, well out the Boulevard Raspail at the farthest reaches of the city. Found the right café on the second try. Struck up a conversation with a man named Yasin (or so he said) who, for six hundred francs, had returned with the Radom after only a twenty-minute absence. Khristo now rewrapped the package, glanced at the clock on the table, finished dressing, and headed for the Métro.
Omaraeff had told him they would be having lunch at a place called Bistro Jambol—a pleasant coincidence since Jambol was the name of a town in Bulgaria. But, when Khristo opened the steam-fogged door of the restaurant, he realized with horror that it was no coincidence at all. The smell of the agneshki drebuliiki—lamb innards grilled with garlic—came rushing up at him, along with the realization that he was standing in a roomful of expatriate Bulgarians while holding in his hand a Polish pistol wrapped in brown paper. He broke into a sweat. Of all the stupid places to go! Half the Paris NKVD would be hanging around. He took a small step backward, then a hand closed around his elbow. He looked behind him to discover a tiny waiter with slicked-back hair and a milky eye. “Omaraeff?” the man said. Khristo nodded dumbly. The man had a grip like a pincers—he felt halfway to the Lubianka then and there. “Upstairs,” the man said in Bulgarian, nodding toward a rickety staircase on the far wall.
At the top, tables were packed together on a balcony. “Nikko!” Omaraeff was beckoning violently. “Over here.” He moved sideways through a sea of people—eyes rising to meet his own—talking, gesturing, observing his progress, all without missing a bite.
“Zdrasti!” Omaraeff greeted him as he sat down. “May you live a hundred years—don't eat the lamb.”
Khristo stared at the hand-scratched Cyrillic on the ragged piece of paper that served as menu. A waiter filled the cloudy glass at his side with yellow wine that smelled like resin. “What, then?”
“Try the shkembe.”
Beef kidney cooked in milk. He ordered it, and the sweating waiter flew away. The room was dense with clouds of strong smoke from the black tobacco.
Omaraeff smiled. “Just like home, eh, Nikko?”
“Yes,” Khristo said. “Just like home.”
Omaraeff described himself, with a smile, as a circus Bulgarian. His enormous head was shaved smooth, and he wore a grand Turkish mustache, waxed to a fine point on either end. He looked like a strong man in a circus, an appearance that gave him great cachet as the headwaiter at Heininger. To this, for luncheon, he had added a pale gray linen suit and vest, set off by a lavender silk tie fixed in place by a stickpin of ruby-colored glass, the entire ensemble overlaid by a cloud of cologne that smelled like cloves. He took a long sip of the resinous wine and closed his eyes with pleasure. Suddenly, a dramatic melancholy fell upon him. “Ah Nikko, how sadly we wander this world.” He raised his glass before Khristo's eyes, a symbol of good times gone away.
“That's so,” Khristo said, not wanting to be impolite. But he could see Omaraeff, in his mind's eye, taking supper in the Heininger kitchen before the late evening crowds arrived. A slice of white Normandy veal washed down with a little Chambertin. Surely he made the most of his exile.
“Mark my words, boy, our time is coming soon enough.”
The shkembe arrived, a vast plateful of it, reeking of rose pepper and sour milk and the singular aroma of kidney. Khristo poked it about with his fork and ate a boiled potato. “I've brought you a Radom,” he said, gesturing with a glance toward the brown parcel by a dish of raw onions.
“Good. It will speak for us. Speak to the world.”
“Oh?”
“Mm,” Omaraeff said, his mouth full of stew. He swallowed vigorously. “The Bolsheviiki press us too hard, eh?” He wiped his mouth with a large napkin and lifted his glass. “Czar Boris!”
“Czar Boris,” Khristo repeated. The wine was thick and bitter.
Loud voices flared suddenly to life. He looked over the railing of the balcony and saw two old men with white beards who had risen abruptly from their table, upsetting a plate of yellow soup, which splattered on the floor. “A prick on your grave!” one of the men shouted. “And on yours!” the other answered, grabbing him by the throat. Diners on all sides cheered as they choked one another. Waiters came rushing in to separate them, the table went over with a crash, several people wrestled in a heap amid the spilled food on t
he floor.
Omaraeff shook his head with admiration. “Look at that old fart Gheorghiev, will you? All for honor. Hit him, Todor,” he called over the balcony. “Break the bastard's head!” He turned back to Khristo and punched a thick index finger into the brown package. “It's come to this now. You'll see.” His fingernails were perfectly trimmed and had the opalescent shine produced by a suede buffer.
“Perhaps you ought not to tell me too much, Djadja Omaraeff. Some things are best done in secrecy.” Everyone called Omaraeff Uncle.
“Not tell you? Not tell Nikko? Hell boy, you are the one who's going to do it!”
“I am?”
“You'll see.” He raised his glass. “Adolf Hitler.”
“Adolf Hitler,” Khristo repeated.
They waited at a corner of the Boulevard St.-Michel, the flics would not let them cross the street. Close ranks of marching men and women swept past them, chanting and singing.
Omaraeff wore a topcoat that matched his suit, and the stiff wind toyed with the flaps as he stood at the edge of the pavement, eyes smoldering, hands jammed in pockets as though he feared they might reach out and smack a few heads. Khristo was bundled in his battered sheepskin jacket, and they looked for all the world like a well-to-do uncle and a wayward nephew, the latter having just recently been treated to a morally instructive lunch.
“And which are these?” Omaraeff asked. His voice floated on a sea of contempt.
“Medical students, I believe. The stethoscopes …”
“Ah-hah. Doctors.” The word spoke volumes.
A young man with an artist's flowing hair turned to them and raised his fist. “Red front!” he called out proudly. A thin fellow by his side added, “Join us!” His friend completed the thought: “Bring peace and mercy to all mankind!”
